<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Clipped Wings by Llybian</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27742531">Clipped Wings</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llybian/pseuds/Llybian'>Llybian</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Summer Nights [16]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Slayers (Anime &amp; Manga)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>An emotional whitman's sampler, F/M, a disgusted kind of love, freedom is an illusion innit?, xellos gets DRUNK</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 19:35:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,165</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27742531</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llybian/pseuds/Llybian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“You can’t be drunk,” Filia said, as if she could order the facts away. She clomped over and tried to pull him up. “That shouldn’t even be possible!”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Filia Ul Copt/Xellos</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Summer Nights [16]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/796563</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Clipped Wings</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It always started out sharp and peppery. That was when surprise overtook her. He’d say a word or two to her, probably something fairly harmless or a reply to something she thought she’d been saying just to herself, and then she’d jump and look wildly around the room for the source of the comment.</p>
<p>“Xellos!” Filia cried out, that surprise even now beginning to shake away into anger. “What are <em>you</em> doing here?”</p>
<p>Once the surprise was shed, her teeth would grind together and her eyes would narrow. That would generally signal her move from shock into the deep canyon of annoyance and suspicion where she would stay for most of the remainder of their conversation. Annoyance was sugary, diverging into syrupy when her rage deepened. It wasn’t filling like fear or pain, or savory like sadness, but it was almost addictively sweet.</p>
<p>He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you ever have anything new to say? I’m sorry to point out that while <em>dragons</em> might consider that a proper greeting, I doubt anyone <em>else</em> would think it’s very polite.”</p>
<p>“I don’t have to be polite to you,” she declared, stepping away from her chore of lining shelves to glare at him properly. “Would you prefer I greeted you with what monsters consider polite? Doesn’t that generally involve collapsing someone’s skull?”</p>
<p>“Hardly,” Xellos said with a scoff and a frown. It wasn’t all saccharinity. Things could get downright <em>sour</em> when Filia started jabbing back. But it gave the experience variety. “And the Golden Dragons? Aside from rude demands of intent, how does your race greet people? Maybe a little species cleansing? Or is that just for other dragon races?”</p>
<p>That one hurt and perhaps even a little too much. He could feel it radiating off of her. Things tended to escalate in arguments with Filia, so he thought he might have to recalibrate. Before he had a chance, though, she was pointing at him, with that look in her eyes that said she might either cry or slap him upside the head next.</p>
<p>“You of all people have no right to throw stones on <em>that</em> issue!”</p>
<p>“Ah, perhaps, Filia,” he said, trying to calm the waters back to a more reasonable level of churning agitation. “It seems that both our races have been involved in mass… impoliteness.”</p>
<p>“I’d use a stronger word than that!” Filia shot back, understandably irked by his reference to genocide in the same terms as one might refer to not taking your shoes off inside someone else’s house.</p>
<p>“Would you?” Xellos asked, taking a seat on the step stool Filia used to reach the highest shelves in her shop. “But it’s on both sides, wouldn’t you agree?”</p>
<p>“That’s not even—” Filia began. Then she stopped and you could practically see steam spurting out of her nostrils. “Look, Golden Dragons have done horrible things. I know that. You <em>know</em> I know that. But even in the midst of those terrible things they were <em>trying</em> to do good. They were terrible wrong, but at least their intentions were good. You <em>monsters</em> actually go out and attempt to be awful!”</p>
<p>Xellos waved a finger at her. “Ah, so are you saying that a well-intentioned massacre is less vile than a poorly-intentioned massacre? Do the brutally murdered appreciate that good intent?”</p>
<p>Filia often thought that Xellos derived some sick pleasure from confusing her. This was absolutely true. Filia was trying to build up a counter-argument, because she knew that Xellos’s thesis was full of holes. She just wasn’t entirely sure how to express that at the moment. But he was already moving on and didn’t give her a chance to respond.</p>
<p>“And in any case, if intent is considered then the matter becomes all the more murky when you realize that these acts are carried out by servants under the orders of their superiors. This is true on both sides. Now… correct me if I’m wrong, Filia, but isn’t obedience one of the Dragon race’s favorite virtues?” Though certainly not one of Filia’s, Xellos had to admit. Unless it involved being obedient to <em>her</em>. “If that’s the case and following orders is a laudable act, then <em>by your own argument</em> you have absolutely no reason to hold a grudge against me for such acts.”</p>
<p>Filia nearly exploded. “Are you <em>serious?!</em>” she demanded. “You’re actually going to try to play the ‘I was just following orders’ card and think everything will be forgiven?”</p>
<p>“I was not apologizing,” Xellos said coldly. “I was simply following through with <em>your</em> logic.”</p>
<p>“That wasn’t <em>my</em> logic,” Filia countered fiercely. “That’s some twisted version of my logic that you’ve concocted by missing the point of everything I was saying to excuse your dastardly behavior!”</p>
<p>“Pardon me for listening to your words, I’m sure,” he answered icily, though he was glad at least for the ‘d’. “I just consider it rather hypocritical for you to judge me for carrying out orders, when you served your own race in a similar—though infinitely less important—way.”</p>
<p>“Not even <em>remotely</em> similar!” Filia shrieked. “And anyway, you hit on the actual point there, <em>served,</em>” she said forcefully. “I didn’t like the things that the Dragon race was doing or the things I was being asked to do so <em>I quit!</em> I could do that too. Nobody clipped my wings.”</p>
<p>“And if you’re going to claim to be just ‘an obedient servant’ then I’ve got news for you,” Filia snapped, really getting in his face. “If you get pay and the occasional day off then you’re a servant; if you get to go home at the end of the day and belong to yourself then you’re a servant; if your choices belong to you then you’re a servant; if you can quit when you don’t like what you’re being asked to do and not face <em>death</em> then you’re a servant. If not, then that’s just,”—she struggled with herself for a moment—“that’s just <em>slavery.</em>”</p>
<p>Xellos gaped at her. How could she have the audacity to suggest that— If she honestly believed something so stupid then there was no way he could set the deluded creature straight. When, by all accounts, if she had even the slightest bit of sense she should <em>envy</em> him his position. How <em>dare</em> she! Did she really think that just because those more powerful than her deigned to let have her way <em>for the moment</em> that she was freer than him? Did she have any concept of how fragile that illusion of freedom was? That at any moment it could be taken away? And yet she had the nerve to imply something so… so <em>low</em> and untrue about him?</p>
<p>He was about tell her that. <em>All</em> that. To take the blindfold off her and let her see what chains she really lived with. He was about to tell her, when he picked up a new sensation.</p>
<p>It was small, just a tendril of feeling flowing off of Filia as she stared back at him with a difficult to decipher expression. It had a coarse, sickening taste, as bitter in his mouth as ash.</p>
<p>It was <em>pity.</em></p>
<p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Totally Smashed</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Xellos was still stewing from his last encounter with Filia. Being called a slave by a lizard who did not even possess a hundredth of his power was not sitting at all well with him. She was just spewing nonsense and didn’t even understand half of what she was saying. Yes, that was right. Unfortunately this was probably the eighth time he’d told himself that and the matter didn’t seem any more likely to leave his head.</p><p>He had to suppose that from a certain perspective, namely Filia’s, she was actually correct. But that was only in the way that all creatures were subject to the whims of those more powerful than them. She wasn’t any freer than he was, she just wasn’t aware of it. We’re all under someone’s heel; that’s just a fact.</p><p>It wasn’t, to be perfectly honest, a fact that was making him feel any better.</p><p>It was the pity that had really gotten to him. The idea of someone like her pitying him was almost too much to bear. He’d witnessed pity before, but it being directed at him was a galling and utterly foreign experience. Being pitied was not pleasant. After all, pity was just a disgusted kind of love.</p><p>This… wasn’t a productive line of thought. But he kept running through the same old tracks and was unable to put it out of his mind or move on to anything new. At this point, he just wished he could stop thinking, if only for a little while.</p><p><em>It is in this mindset</em>, Xellos observed grimly, but with irony, <em>that mortals drink.</em></p><p>Of course, Xellos himself occasionally partook in alcohol. It was a… social thing. Humans are much more inclined to make deals over drinks. <em>Not</em> drinking would’ve made them uncomfortable and, in any case, the more he’d drink the more they’d drink and the more they drank the easier it was to strike a deal.</p><p>But it wasn’t the same thing for him. Not having a blood stream to build up alcohol in, he was simply left to enjoy the fine flavor of the beverage while anyone who drank with him enjoyed the effects of inebriation.</p><p>Then again… it was all just a matter of processing chemicals, wasn’t it? He could do that. When the mood struck her, Lord Beastmaster certainly seemed to manage it. With flourish.</p><p>He should… probably check this out. If only to develop a better frame of reference for the experience. Xellos was all about developing better frames of reference.</p><p>He phased out.</p><p>*****</p><p>Some time later Xellos found what he was looking for.  He walked into a bar which wasn’t <em>quite</em> seedy, but definitely on the seedy side. It was seedy-esque; certainly not a place that would make it into a tourist pamphlet top ten list, but on the other hand, they probably actually washed their glasses. The lighting was low and depressed inside; a sharp contrast from the bright, snowy day outside where couples were walking arm in arm, carrying heart-shaped objects. Apparently some sort of late winter festival devoted to love was going on. Perhaps it was the rejects of that ceremony turned to look at him in a glassy-eyed way as he entered and then turned their attention back to their drinks.</p><p>He walked up to the bar, rapped on the counter and asked the bartender to fetch him a bottle of whatever the locals used as paint thinner. Normally this kind of behavior would at least have earned him the cold shoulder in such establishments and at most sent a chair flying at his face, but this bartender hadn’t lasted as long as he had without learning how to feel people out. Priests could always be trouble when they drank and this one looked like trouble already—not in the usual scarred, tattooed, grimacing way—but a kind of trouble nonetheless. He passed the newcomer a bottle and a very small glass without a word.</p><p>Xellos poured a generous dose into the glass with a steady hand and downed it in a way that got the attention of the more competitive clientele of the bar. It tasted awful, but he knew it would start tasting better when the caustic substance starting burning away taste buds. He took another drink and the quality seemed to be marginally improved. It was even better on the third go.</p><p>He was starting to worry that he’d gone to all this trouble for nothing. He wasn’t feeling any different and the stinging encounter with Filia weighed upon his mind just as much. He reached for the glass again and missed, but chalked this up to being lost in thought. He managed to grasp it on the second try.</p><p>The morose silence of the room was broken for a moment as a sigh that was more of a groan from some rose up. Xellos followed the gaze of every man in the room toward the window. The windows must have been dirty, since his view through them was rather blurry, but he could make out a young woman holding a box given to her by a young man. She moved quite animatedly, putting something from the box onto her finger and throwing herself into his arms.</p><p>Xellos turned back to his drink. He didn’t know for sure what number drink this was at the moment, but that hardly mattered. What he <em>did</em> know for sure was that watching the courtship rituals of humans wasn’t doing anything to improve his mood.</p><p>Filia probably would’ve thought it was sweet. If she’d been there she would’ve sighed and clasped a hand to her heart. Maybe if she was really drawn into a fit of emotion she’d take out a handkerchief and cry into it over the romance of the situation. But no… if she’d been there with him she would’ve been too absorbed being disgusted by the bar and its customers. Yes… she’d feel disgust, but not love as well… not <em>pity.</em> No pity for them, but…</p><p>He looked up in time to see one of the bar’s patrons giving him a half smile. It wasn’t a nice smile, and not only because it was on a grizzled prospector’s face and therefore missing a few important teeth. It was an unhappy sort of smile, but one that bespoke a fellow feeling. The man lifted his glass, said: “<em>Wimmin’</em>,” vehemently and took a drink.</p><p>Xellos looked at his own glass. “Wimmin’,” he was forced to agree, and drank it down.</p><p>*****</p><p>A few hours later and even Xellos’s new friends from the bar (to whom he owed a great debt of thanks for teaching him a series of amusing songs) thought that he’d had enough. Now he was roaming around at the stage of drunkenness where calling on an ex to give her a piece of your mind and/or beg her to come back to you seems like an <em>excellent</em> idea. After a few misses he managed to teleport to Filia’s door.</p><p>Before Filia had even managed to get out her quintessential ‘what are <em>you</em> doing here?!’ (with perhaps a confused addition of ‘…and why are you using the door?’) Xellos had declared in what, in his mind, was a clear, reasonable voice: “I don’ need yer <em>pity!</em>”</p><p>For a moment Filia was taken aback, then she sniffed the air and was <em>really</em> taken aback. “Are you drunk?!” she asked disbelievingly as he lurched past her and into the house.</p><p>“<em>No</em>,” he answered belligerently. He walked into nothing and fell down. “…Maybe a li’l,” he admitted from the floor.</p><p>“You can’t be drunk,” Filia said, as if she could order the facts away. She clomped over and tried to pull him up. “That shouldn’t even be <em>possible!</em>”</p><p>“Well if I am itsyer fault,” he said reproachfully, immobile despite her efforts to get him on two feet again.</p><p>She grunted and pulled but he wasn’t moving, instead she ended up falling to the floor next to him where she shrieked at him in utter aggravation and demanded: “How is it <em>my</em> fault?”</p><p>He extended his index finger and narrowly avoided poking his own eye out. “ ‘s <em>secret</em>,” he said.</p><p>She slammed her hands against the wooden floor in frustration. “I demand that you sober up immediately!” she ordered.</p><p>Xellos actually might’ve been able to follow this somewhat ridiculous command if he’d been in any state to see that it was a good suggestion. As it was, he reached out and touched the clenched and angry face in front of him. “S’okay though,” he said in drunken rumination. “S’okay ‘cause… we’re the same.”</p><p>After a brief moment of uncertain she slapped his hand away. “What are you talking about?” she shot back in utter bewilderment.</p><p>He hoisted himself up unsteadily on his own steam and walked on, using his staff like a cane as Filia scrambled to follow him. “ ‘Salright, ‘salright,” he kept muttering to himself. “Yer the same ‘s me.”</p><p>“I am <em>not</em> the same as you,” Filia said forcefully. “What do you mean by that?” He stumbled again and caught himself on her sofa. “Xellos!”</p><p>“Filia,” he said, at first it was an answer, but then he seemed to get stuck on it. “Filia, Filia, Filia. For some reason ‘s nice to say.” He climbed onto her couch and quieted.</p><p>Filia watched him with growing horror for a moment. “No,” she said, crossing her arms. “You are <em>not</em> sleeping it off here. Absolutely no way!”</p><p>There was silence from the form on her couch. She stepped back. “Absolutely no way,” she repeated, but to herself. She couldn’t just let someone that evil spend the night on her couch, could she?</p><p>She drew closer once again and reached out a tentative hand, as if ready to recoil in case he awoke and made more bizarre proclamations. She touched his forehead gently and swept his bangs out of his face. His eyes were closed, not in his usual insincere squint but in the slumber of the seriously drunk.</p><p>“What could’ve possibly gotten into you?” she asked softly.</p><p>She hesitated for a moment, then reached up for the quilt that was draped over the top of the couch, pulled it over him, and stood up.  She dimmed the lights and went up to her room.</p><p>He was going to have a lot of explaining to do when morning came.</p><p>…And a monster of a headache.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Just Because You Can Do It, Doesn't Mean You Should</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Xellos’s eyes blinked open slowly, as though the body he used to get things done in the physical realm wasn’t quite as responsive as it usually was. Waking up and not knowing his whereabouts was an unusual experience for him… so was waking up.</p><p>He concentrated on his surroundings. He was on a light-brown sofa in well-decorated (if a little froufrou) living room. It was an extremely clean space. In fact, the contrast between the unnecessarily clean living room and the somewhat messy kitchen with dirty dishes piled on the counter was very odd. He tilted his head to see that he’d been covered with a quilt. Several patches of the quilt featured kittens.</p><p><em>Oh dear…</em> he thought as recollections began to emerge.                </p><p>“It’s about time you woke up,” a voice complained.</p><p>Xellos turned his head to see Filia glowering at him from over by the mantle. She was holding a feather duster and ostensibly dusting the dust-free trinkets over the fireplace. Her body was tense, like she’d been waiting for something for a long time and now worried that it might have been better to go on waiting.</p><p>He sat up on the couch and touched his forehead gingerly. The fine chemical processing structures that he’d created the day before to <em>properly</em> enjoy alcohol seemed to be sloshing around as though preserved in death throes. It was a good thing that he didn’t really need those structures, because he knew that they’d been severely damaged by last night’s little… indiscretions. In short, alcohol was no longer fun.</p><p>“Well,” he said with some effort as he fingered the quilt over him with his other hand, “this is extremely unpleasant.”</p><p>Filia held her hands to her hips, one hand still clasping the feather duster. “A hangover is fate punishing you for drinking,” she told him self-righteously.</p><p>“I was talking about your quilting skills,” Xellos answered calmly.</p><p>She threw the feather duster at his head, which is, for the record, not a nice thing to do to someone who is hung-over. It was a mark of how bad Xellos was feeling that he didn’t dodge.</p><p>“I think,” Xellos said slowly, almost laboriously, as the feather duster fell on the floor in front of him, “that I’ve had enough of this.” He made adjustments. The air shimmered oddly around him for a moment, like super-heated air on a desert horizon. He straightened up and looked more alert.</p><p>“What did you just do?” Filia asked suspiciously.</p><p>“Got rid of the alcohol,” Xellos said simply.</p><p>Filia growled. “You can’t just opt out of the consequences of your vile actions!”</p><p>“Yes, I can,” Xellos said, “I just did.”</p><p>That much was evident. “Well, it’s not <em>right,” </em>Filia insisted. “You think you can just get drunk and then waltz in here and mess everything up without so much as paying the penalty of a headache in the morning?! There is a <em>child</em> in this house for your information. You should be <em>ashamed</em> of yourself!”</p><p>Xellos made a determined study of his fingernails, which was difficult because he was wearing gloves. “I don’t think I should have to change my behavior just because <em>you</em> can’t grow up.”</p><p>Filia took a minute on that one, then set her teeth into a grimace. Too bad she didn’t have anything else to throw at him. “I was <em>talking</em> about Val.”</p><p>“He at least has more of an excuse then you,” Xellos said, visiting a smile on her.</p><p>Filia gave him a disapproving look. No one had the right to be that chipper the morning after bursting into their enemy’s house in a drunken stupor and then collapsing. She approached him, and he watched her as though wondering what she’d do next. Then she reached down and pointedly snatched up her feather duster. She sat down on the recliner perpendicular to the couch.</p><p>She sat there for a moment, plucking idly at the duster, before finally saying: “I didn’t think that you monsters could even get drunk.”</p><p>“We can,” Xellos said, swinging around his legs so he was facing her. He still had the quilt over him, which made him look very out of place. “We just don’t have to.”</p><p>Filia’s brow creased. “Why would you want to get drunk if you don’t have to?”</p><p>Xellos shrugged, not looking at her as he shook out the quilt and began folding it on his lap. “I suppose because I can.”</p><p>That explanation cut absolutely no ice with Filia. She gripped the feather duster in her hand, but held on in case he did something else to make her want to hurl it at him that was worse. “That’s no reason to do something!”</p><p>“Isn’t it?” Xellos said, using patented deflection technique number one (respond to questions with questions); “Then why do you get drunk?” he asked, pressing on to patented deflection technique number two (pretend the other person is the one with the problem).</p><p>Filia scowled. His patented deflection techniques weren’t anything new to her. “<em>I</em> don’t get drunk.”</p><p>“Oh really?” Xellos asked disbelievingly. “I’ve seen a few tell-tale bottles on high shelves where children’s hands can’t find them.”</p><p>Filia made an indignant squawking sound. Xellos had no right to go through her pantry and pass judgment on her. “Those are just for cooking!” she explained.</p><p>Xellos gave her a sly look.</p><p>“Alright,” she said harshly, “maybe <em>occasionally</em> when I’ve had a very bad day I’ll… put it to non-culinary use. But it’s not like I get wasted and come to <em>your</em> door lurching around and slurring nonsense!”</p><p>“That would be funny,” Xellos commented, giving the drunken-Filia scenario an almost criminal amount of thought.</p><p>“<em>You</em> didn’t seem like you were having fun,” Filia pointed out. “You sounded upset.”</p><p>One of those quick twitches crossed Xellos’s face. It was the kind that always left Filia unsure as to whether she imagined it or not. “By you?” He let out a little "as if!" snort.</p><p>Filia narrowed her eyes and leaned forward. “I never said by me.” She gave him a puzzled look. “What could I possibly have done to upset you so much?”</p><p>“I suppose you just do it naturally,” he said sourly.</p><p>“I was being serious,” Filia said severely. “What did I say that hurt so much that you needed to get smashed to forget it?”</p><p>“You can’t hurt me, Filia,” he said, falsely as it happened.</p><p>“My ‘pitying’ you seems to hurt you,” Filia struck back. She’d had all evening lying awake in bed and all morning waiting for him to wake up to mull over his strange performance. “But apparently that’s okay because ‘we’re the same’.”</p><p>“We’re not the same,” Xellos almost whispered.</p><p>“That’s what <em>I</em> said; <em>you</em> seemed to have other ideas.”</p><p>Xellos was quiet for a moment. It had all made more sense when he was slightly-or-more-than-slightly-as-the-case-may-be unhinged from reality. This idea that no matter how different they seemed that there was something about her that called out a fellow feeling… that they could understand each other in ways that no one else could.</p><p>“I was a little out of sorts as you might have noticed,” he answered.</p><p>“Maybe,” Filia said, “but that doesn’t mean it came out of nowhere.” She gave him a searching look. “What were you thinking?”</p><p>He got up abruptly, picking up his staff from where Filia had leaned it against the couch.  “Clearly I wasn’t,” his back said.</p><p>“You were!” Filia shot back indignantly, standing and moving toward him. “Maybe you didn’t like what you were thinking but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen!” She reached out and touched his shoulder. “Xellos?”</p><p>He turned around snatched her hand, but when he spoke next he sounded more tired than angry. “You’re doing it again, Filia.”</p><p>“What?” Filia asked, unsure as to whether she should take back her hand or let things lie. It felt very much like that brief moment when he’d touched her face the night before.</p><p>“Pitying me,” he said, definitely sounding resigned.</p><p>“I’m <em>not</em>,” Filia said, caught off-guard by this accusation.</p><p>“You are,” he said heavily, “and you were. I can feel it.”</p><p>“Well, maybe I am,” she shouted, “but if I am it’s just because you can’t even manage to tell me what’s going on without resorting to changing the subject or your <em>stupid </em>catchphrase or pretending this is all about me!”</p><p>“It <em>is</em> all about you,” he said gravely, though he understood Filia’s meaning.</p><p>“<em>I’m</em> not the one that’s upset about something!” she yelled back. He raised an eyebrow and she added: “Fine. I <em>am</em> upset. But only because you started it.”</p><p>“We are rather in tune to each other, aren’t we?” Xellos observed with a small smile.</p><p>She very nearly stamped her foot. “You’re changing the subject <em>again.</em>”</p><p>“I’m not,” he said. “Not really.” He looked into her had-it-up-to-here-with-this-bullshit expression and sighed. He sank back onto the couch, still holding her hand so that she was obliged to sit next to him.</p><p>“Could you say that <em>you’d</em> be happy about being called a slave?” he asked her.</p><p>“That?” she asked incredulously. “Come on, you’ve said way worse things about me!” That was what her words said, but there was a prickle of guilt just beyond them. Xellos could taste it. It tasted better than the pity, but he still didn’t like being on the receiving end of it.</p><p>He scratched his cheek in thought. “I suppose I have,” he said.</p><p>“Don’t just admit it so calmly like that!” Filia exploded.</p><p>“I thought you’d appreciate my honesty,” he answered smoothly.</p><p>She scowled. “You’re not <em>honest.</em> You tell the truth—most of the time—but that’s not the same thing.”</p><p>Xellos couldn’t help but smile. Filia was more perceptive than most people would give her credit. That’s why exchanges with her, while often leading to triumph for him, could easily end in such scenarios as him getting the bright idea to marinade his troubles in whiskey. What a troublesome girl she was…</p><p>She was looking down now, at his hand still holding hers—lightly, almost inviting her to let go. “And that’s what was bothering you?” she asked quietly, as she let his words sink in.</p><p>“Don’t feel too sorry for me,” he warned: “it’s not species-appropriate. Anyway,” he added, with a shrug of his shoulders, “we’re all governed by limitations… you as much as I, perhaps even more so. And don’t fool yourself. There are very few things that I would change even if I had the power to.”</p><p>She leaned toward him, eyes wide, surprised and watching. “…But there are things you would change?”</p><p>He increased the pressure on her hand for just a moment, perhaps more as a reminder that he was holding it than anything. “I suppose there’s always a line,” he said speculatively, “but it’s rather sketchy as to where exactly it is. So I’m afraid I won’t know until I’ve crossed it.”</p><p>“And you’re worried that you’re going to cross it?” she asked. It must be true, she thought, or the idea of his freedom being restricted wouldn’t have driven him to… to <em>try out</em> drunk.</p><p>He looked at her very seriously. “I’m <em>going</em> to cross it,” he said. “That’s the problem.”</p><p>“But what will happen to you if you do that?” she asked. Surely Xellos’s creator and master would do more than give him a time-out if he stepped out of line.</p><p>He rolled his shoulders back. “Hope that the line gets redrawn,” he said simply.</p><p>She gripped the feather duster with the hand not being cradled in Xellos’s gloved one, sliding the feathers idly against the base of the couch as she thought. That hardly seemed like a satisfying or secure way of looking at things. But maybe Xellos was valuable enough that he could get away with whatever small indiscretion was so important to him.</p><p>He let go of her hand and tapped the side of her nose playfully with his index finger. “But look at it this way,” he said brightly, “for someone in my station to be able to hang around in some dragon hovel after a night’s hard drinking without stirring up trouble seems to imply a more than comfortable amount of liberty.”</p><p>She scowled at his finger, still in the air in one of Xellos’s stock gestures. His serious to silly attitude was starting to annoy her. Not only that—her house was <em>not</em> a hovel!</p><p>“You don’t know that,” she shot back. “You haven’t even reported in—after spending the night at the <em>very nice house</em> of a golden dragon no less!”</p><p>He withdrew his hand and looked thoughtful. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted. He leaned against his staff and propelled himself off the couch. “I suppose I’d better go face the music then,” he said in a voice that had a bit of a sigh in it.</p><p>He looked at her, looking at him, and perhaps her pity wasn’t as terrible an experience as the first time.</p><p>“Oh, might as well,” he said, “I’m in trouble anyway,” and kissed her briefly on the lips before disappearing from the physical plane.</p><p>She brought the feather duster around in a heavy, inevitable arc, slicing the air where he’d been just a second ago with a more terrible force than a mere feather duster ought to carry.</p><p>“JUST WHAT KIND OF ‘LINE’ WERE YOU THINKING ABOUT CROSSING?!” she demanded of the still shimmering space where he’d disappeared.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>